What is a skill?

A skill is a representation of a learned ability to do something. For Crowfall, we have chosen to represent this numerically on a scale of 0-200. While the vast majority of skills cap at 100, some are allowed to train beyond that into the Heroic range.

Every skill in Crowfall (i.e. ‘One-Handed Sword Proficiency’, or ‘Cruelty’) maps to a player statistic (‘attack power’, ‘critical hit chance’).

Not only can skills grant multiple stats, but multiple skills can increase the same stat. We have skills that grant increases to multiple statistics; usually these are contained within the Novice and Mastery skills of any skill tree.

What are the properties of a skill?

There are multiple properties to a skill such as:

Type - either a general or class skill

Tier - a multiplier on the amount of XP required to progress this skill

Name - generic and informative for general skills, thematic and witty for class skills

Description – information about what the skill does

Icon – pretty art with a progress bar around it showing how far you have trained in a skill

Skill Timer – displays how long until you gain the next point in a skill

What can a skill do?

Not only can a skill grant increases to statistics, skills can also grant crafting recipes, the ability to use specific types of equipment and even grant powers.

The caveat to this is that since the vessel acts a filter to your crows’ skills, you may have been granted a recipe on your crow that is not useable on every vessel. In some cases, however, you can get around this class restriction by applying a discipline rune that re-enables use of that recipe on that class.

How do skills advance?

A player can use the Skill Tree interface to set a number of his skills to advance. Players will then begin to earn experience points (XP) in the selected skill(s) in real world time – even when they aren’t online. Every few seconds, skill XP points will trickle into your selected skill(s), giving you increased benefits outlined above and unlocking new skills that you can elect to train in the future.

In effect, your characters keep advancing while you do things like sleep or go to work. You won’t be at a numerical disadvantage versus other players just because they have more time to invest in the game than you do.

Currently, in our Pre-Alpha playtesting, you can only change or set your skill training DURING one of our test windows. This means you have to log into a match with your character(s) to set up your skill training.

When the game launches, the training service will be available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that you can change which skill(s) you want to focus on in real time.

How many skills can I train at once?

A standard Crowfall account may train one general and one class skill concurrently at any time. A Crowfall account that has VIP status (through the use of a VIP ticket that was purchased, gifted or traded) may train one general and three different class skills at any time. (See below for a description of ‘general’ versus ‘class’ skills.)

Please note that you have to spread the three skills across three different classes; you cannot train multiple skills in the same class skill tree at one time. The reason for this limitation is to ensure that VIP status offers more options versus non-VIP, but not more power. VIP members do not get an advantage in general skills, but they DO have the benefits of having more variety in the classes they can readily play.

How many skills are in Crowfall?

We currently have about 600 skills in the game. As more features come online, we expect this number to increase to upwards of 1,500 by launch.

Do I start with all the skills? Are any skills locked or hidden?

Crows have access to most skills from the moment the account is created – assuming the necessary pre-requisites are trained.

However, some skills have to be found via in-game methods such as looting, crafting and/or winning campaigns. We call these skills Arcane Knowledge. Once an Arcane Knowledge skill has been unlocked, that account (‘crow’) will have access to that skill across all characters (‘vessels’) - subject, of course, to normal vessel restrictions as described above.

How are the skills organized?

Skills are organized using a tree system. These are basically branching sets of thematically-related skills that are set up with a chain of pre-requisites. Our branching system allows us to create many-to-many relationships between skills. A skill can be unlocked by one skill (A à B), by any one of another set of skills (i.e. A or B or C à D) or even by a combination of multiple other skills (X and Y and Z à A)

Progress through a skill tree can unlock what we call ‘dependent’ (child) skill trees, as well. For example:

The Blacksmithing tree can unlock the skill trees Weaponsmithing and Armorsmithing.

What kind of skills are considered ‘thematically-related’?

We tried to apply some (narrative) logic when designing these trees (which can be challenging when you need to create a skill tree for the sorcerous art of Necromancy.) Basically, we broke down the various steps, stages or areas of expertise that a person might acquire when mastering about a particular area of knowledge (…and the ones that weren’t obvious, we made up!)

As a simple example, the Weapon Basics tree only contains skills that are related to simple weapons. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t find a stealth-related skill inside of the Weapon Basics tree.

What kinds of skill trees are there?

Skill trees are divided into two main categories: general and class.

General skills are further subdivided into three major gameplay activities: combat, crafting and exploration.

The skills contained in each tree are what you might expect to find. Skills that are useful across every class, weapons and armor skills in the combat trees, crafting skills in the crafting trees and gameplay actions as stealth, harvesting and animal husbandry in the exploration trees.

Class skill trees contain specific skills related to each class and their promotion classes. Each class has a dedicated skill tree, and three promotion class dependent trees that allow further class specialization.

How can I train in a promotion skill tree?

Class promotion skill trees are accessed once you meet the requirements of the base class. (For example, to train in the Crusader skill tree the player must first train X amount of skills in the parent Knight skill tree.)

Do I get credit for confessor skills that have been trained while I am playing a frostweaver?

Class skills ONLY apply to the current vessel, as this is a representation of your skill within that class. You do get the benefit of these skill gains across EVERY character you play of that class – skills gains are account-based, not character specific!

Do I get credit for knight skills that have been trained while I am playing a crusader (a knight promotion class)?

Yes, since Knight is the parent class of Crusader, you get credit for all Knight and all Crusader skills trained.

How are my skill levels computed for each of my avatars?

Every account has a “crow form”, which is the immortal spirit associated with that account. Skills are gained by the “crow” and these skills are inherited by every “vessel” (characters you possess/play). For details on crows and vessels, check out the crow & vessels FAQ.

Note that when you decide to play a character, your skill levels for each skill will be capped to the skill max for that vessel. While you might retain the memory of the acrobatic prowess that you had in your previous life as an Elven Frostweaver, you won’t get (all) of the benefit of that knowledge when you possess the body of a Centaur Legionnaire.

This skill max calculation is the result of (the base vessel quality) + (advantage and disadvantage runestones applied to this vessel) + (disciplines runestones applied to this vessel).

Detailed examples:

Your crow has One-Handed Sword Mastery trained to 200. When you enter a Knight vessel, this skill is reduced to the Knight’s maximum of 100 One-Handed Sword. You add the Blademaster discipline, which raises your Knight’s maximum in One-Handed Sword skill by 25. Your skill total when playing this vessei is now 125.

Your crow has Crusader Proficiency (a skill found in the Knight’s Crusader promotion skill tree) trained to 52. When you enter a Crusader vessel, this skill remains 52 since the Crusader’s maximum of 100 Crusader Proficiency is not exceeded. You set your passive training to start training this skill. When you login, you will see this skill increase as a result of passive training. This will continue until the max of 100 is reached, at which point you can elect to train a different skill or continue training the skill, in which case you would need to also apply a runestone to this vessel to increase his max and see the benefit of your continued training.

How will my character be unique if we can train all the same skills on the crow?

While each player will be able to train the same skills at the crow level, the sheer amount of time and number of branches that a player can explore on each skill tree will cause crows to be dramatically different.

When you factor in all the different elements that can be applied or customized—passive training, advantage & disadvantage runestones, class promotions, vessel quality, disciplines runestones—the result is staggering. We expect an extremely wide variety of both vessels and playstyles.

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